Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/171

Rh her, by the imprudence of her mother, was ſoon ſquandered: She no ſooner began to taſte of life, than an attempt was made upon her innocence. When ſhe was about being happy in the arms of her amiable lover Mr. Gwynnet, he was ſnatched from her by an immature fate. Amongſt her other misfortunes, ſhe laboured under the diſpleaſure of Mr. Pope, whoſe poetical majeſty ſhe had innocently offended, and who has taken care to place her in his Dunciad. Mr. Pope had once vouchſafed to viſit her, in company with Henry Cromwel, Eſq; whoſe letters by ſome accident fell into her hands, with ſome of Pope’s anſwers. As ſoon as that gentleman died, Mr. Curl found means to wheedle them from her, and immediately committed them to the preſs. This ſo enraged Pope, that tho’ the lady was very little to blame, yet he never forgave her.

Not many months after our poeteſs had been releaſed from her gloomy habitation, ſhe took a ſmall lodging in Fleet ſtreet, where ſhe died on the 3d of February 1730, in the 56th year of her age, and was two days after decently interred in the church of St. Bride’s.

Corinna, conſidered as an authoreſs, is of the ſecond rate, ſhe had not ſo much wit as Mrs. Behn, or Mrs. Manley, nor had ſo happy a power of intellectual painting; but her poetry is ſoft and delicate, her letters ſprightly and entertaining. Her Poems were publiſhed after her death, by Curl; and two volumes of Letters which paſs’d between her and Mr. Gwynnet. We ſhall ſelect as a ſpecimen of her poetry, an Ode addreſſed to the ducheſs of Somerſet, on her birth-day. An